After four rolling stages in Galicia, La Vuelta Femenina starts ramping up the climbing on stage 5, on a day that will transition the race from its punchy beginning towards its mountain-heavy final two stages.
Starting in the big city of Léon, the stage heads west to Astorga, covering just shy of 120km and taking the race over 1,000m altitude for the first time in the race, with both climbs of the day breaking that mark.
There are two category 3 ascents on the menu: Collada de Olleros de Alba (4.6km at 4%) at the 42.6km mark, followed by the Alto de la Garandilla (3.3km at 5.2%) at the 73.7km mark of the race.
The Collada de Olleros will be the hardest, with a 4% average gradient but ramping up to 8.3% for the final kilometre. This might tempt the climbers to begin to test eachother a little, but coming so far away from the stage finale, it's hard to see this being decisive.
The categorised climbing finishes with 50km to go, though the peloton will still be on a plateau with a little rise after the Alto de la Garandilla, and then that is followed by a predominantly low-grade descent for the last 30km into the finish line at Astorga.
Then, as the organisers seem to love to do in this race, there's a kick up to the line for another truly challenging finish.
Like the stages preceding it, this is definitely an in-between type stage, not truly sprinter-friendly but likely to be contested by some sort of group sprint. But stage 5 is decidedly harder than the stages before it, with the climbing ramping up, and the potential for some weaker climbers to have a difficult day if the GC teams want to set a difficult pace.
New red jersey wearer Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) will be hoping to extend her tenure in the lead by one more day, and that seems possible, as she should be able to get over the climbs safely, as long as the GC riders don't want to blow things up.
That's certainly possible, as the GC riders have sat back quietly in this race so far, but there's good reason for that, given the mountain onslaught to come on stages 6 and 7. The climbing demands on those stages is so high that it wouldn't be surprising to see the likes of Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot keeping their powder dry for one more day on Thursday.
We've seen the breakaway come close on stage 4, and certainly some motivated riders will give it another go tomorrow, and it could be the day they succeed as the fatigue sets in in the bunch. If it's a group battle at the finish, it will suit riders like Kopecky, Liane Lippert and even Niewiadoma-Phinney.
Climbs
- Collada de Olleros de Alba at the 42.6km mark
- Alto de La Garandilla at the 73.7km mark
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